Letters

⁷ Wherefore, until that consolation come, remember, in order to your “continuing in prayers and supplications night and day,” that, however great the temporal prosperity may be which flows around you, you are desolate. For the apostle does not ascribe this gift to every widow, but to her who, being a widow indeed, and desolate, “trusts in God, and continues in supplication night and day.” Observe, however, most vigilantly the warning which follows: “But she that lives in pleasure is dead while she lives;” for a person lives in those things which he loves, which he greatly desires, and in which he believes himself to be blessed. Wherefore, what Scripture has said of riches: “If riches increase, set not your heart upon them,” I say to you concerning pleasures: “If pleasures increase, set not your heart upon them.” Do not, therefore, think highly of yourself because these things are not wanting, but are yours abundantly, flowing, as it were, from a most copious fountain of earthly felicity. By all means look upon your possession of these things with indifference and contempt, and seek nothing from them beyond health of body. For this is a blessing not to be despised, because of its being necessary to the work of life until “this mortal shall have put on immortality” in other words, the true, perfect, and everlasting health, which is neither reduced by earthly infirmities nor repaired by corruptible gratification, but, enduring with celestial rigour, is animated with a life eternally incorruptible. For the apostle himself says, “Make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof,” because we must take care of the flesh, but only in so far as is necessary for health; “For no man ever yet hated his own flesh,” as he himself likewise says. Hence, also, he admonished Timothy, who was, as it appears, too severe upon his body, that he should “use a little wine for his stomach's sake, and for his often infirmities.”

8. Many holy men and women, using every precaution against those pleasures in which she that lives, cleaving to them, and dwelling in them as her heart's delight, is dead while she lives, have cast from them that which is as it were the mother of pleasures, by distributing their wealth among the poor, and so have stored it in the safer keeping of the treasury of heaven. If you are hindered from doing this by some consideration of duty to your family, you know yourself what account you can give to God of your use of riches. For no one knows what passes within a man, “but the spirit of the man which is in him.” We ought not to judge anything “before the time until the Lord come who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts, and then shall every man have praise of God.” It pertains, therefore, to your care as a widow, to see to it that if pleasures increase you do not set your heart upon them, lest that which ought to rise that it may live, die through contact with their corrupting influence. Reckon yourself to be one of those of whom it is written, “Their hearts shall live for ever.”